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Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk gets in a Tesla car as he leaves a hotel in Beijing in May last year.
BUSINESS / Tech / ANALYSIS
Apr 22, 2024

Elon Musk’s robotaxi dreams plunge Tesla into chaos

The idea of creating an autonomous taxi service has been kicking around Tesla for at least eight years.
Zhang Yufei celebrates after winning the women's 200-meter butterfly at the Tokyo Olympics. Zhang is one of 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a banned substance seven months before the Games.
OLYMPICS
Apr 22, 2024

Australian swim coach rejects claims of systemic Chinese doping

An Australian coach who works with the Chinese Swimming Association has rejected claims of systemic state-run doping.
Mai Watanabe, who went by the moniker “Sugar Baby Riri,” dated older men and swindled them out of money by telling them fictitious heartbreaking stories about herself to gain their sympathy.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Apr 22, 2024

'Sugar Baby Riri' gets nine-year prison term over romance scam

The 25-year-old swindled three men out of ¥159 million, which she spent on a Kabukicho host she fell in love with.
Shohei Ohtani has been appointed as the new technology ambassador for Rapsodo, the company announced Monday.
BASEBALL / MLB
Apr 22, 2024

Shohei Ohtani signs deal with sports technology company Rapsodo

Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani has signed a deal to become the technology ambassador for Rapsodo, the company announced on Monday.
Digital platforms have been flooded with disinformation, allowing foreign countries to conduct influence operations and leading to widened social divides.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Apr 28, 2024

How democratic states are regulating digital platforms

Some platforms have been flooded with disinformation, allowing foreign countries to conduct influence operations.
North Korean animators may be involved in the production of some Japanese and U.S. animated shows, according to a report by a website providing analysis on North Korea.
JAPAN
Apr 23, 2024

North Korean animators may be involved in Japan anime production, report says

Shows with suspected North Korean involvement include the Japanese television anime series "Dahliya In Bloom" and the U.S. animated series "Invincible."
A worker walks through a burned out control room at a power plant of energy provider DTEK. A Russian attack blew off parts of the roof and ripped through walls, severing vital communications systems and sparking several blazes.
WORLD / Society
Apr 24, 2024

'Everyone's afraid': Ukraine power plant workers fear fresh strikes

Russia has stepped up devastating bombardments on Ukrainian power plants in recent weeks.
Despite the potential benefits AI might have for bank customers, like finding the best interest rates, there are concerns about the destabilizing effects it may have on financial stability.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2024

Generative AI is coming for your bank. Maybe.

Tech investors reckon that supersmart agents will soon upend the business model of traditional banks, but there are caveats.
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
ASIA PACIFIC
Apr 24, 2024

'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines

Conditions this year have been exacerbated by the El Nino weather phenomenon.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol
BUSINESS / Economy
Apr 25, 2024

South Korea’s economic growth beats forecast as exports rise

South Korea's gross domestic product advanced 1.3% in the three months through March, easily outpacing economists’ consensus for a 0.6% expansion.
Filipino parents and children. In public schools in Metro Manila, a survey of more than 8,000 teachers last month showed 87% of students had suffered from heat-related conditions.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Apr 25, 2024

First COVID, now heat: Online schooling returns to the Philippines

Pupils at 7,000 public schools in the country were sent home last week due to unusually hot weather.
Ryohei Suzuki is plays assassin and detective Ryo Saeba in a new live-action "City Hunter" remake from Netflix.
CULTURE / Film
Apr 25, 2024

'City Hunter' manga hero drops the sexism for new live-action film

Lead actor Ryohei Suzuki says production had to strike a balance between his character's reputation and modern sensibilities.
Specializing in gastronomy-themed tours, Arigato Travel, founded and directed by Anne Kyle, was once a one-woman operation. Today, it counts more than 100 employees.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Apr 26, 2024

Anne Kyle: 'People want to know what life actually is like here’

The founder and CEO of Arigato Travel grew her business from a one-woman operation to a national outfit of more than 100 employees in a matter of years.
A prisoner stands behind the door of a cell in the isolation section of the Villepinte detention center in Villepinte, near Paris.
WORLD / Society
Apr 27, 2024

Ahead of Olympics, a packed Paris prison braces for crowds of inmates

Many of the events are being held in Seine-Saint-Denis, which has the highest ratio of immigrants among France's departments and is also the poorest.
Some programmers are gearing up for what they expect to be an era of tighter controls after Russian President Vladimir Putin secured a mandate until at least 2030 with a landslide win at elections last month.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 27, 2024

Russian programmers play 'cat and mouse' game to outsmart censors

Some of them employing techniques learnt from Chinese hackers' efforts to evade the even more stringent 'Great Firewall' there.
Lawmakers and TikTok creators during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on March 12
BUSINESS
Apr 29, 2024

TikTok creators brace for economic blow thanks to possible U.S. ban

TikTok has become an essential platform for small business starting out in the U.S., one eMarketer analyst said, as a ban on the social media app looms.
The Lions' Yuji Kaneko hit .219 in the team's first 25 games of the season.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / Sac Bunts
Apr 29, 2024

Lions muzzled by poor performance at plate

The record will show the Seibu Lions lost to the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks on Sunday after a 2-2 slider from Jefry Yan got away from catcher Takeru Furuichi as Riku Ogata raced home to score the walk-off run in the 12th inning of a 3-2 Hawks win.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a joint ministerial meeting of the GCC-U.S. Strategic Partnership in Riyadh to discuss the humanitarian crises in the Gaza, on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 30, 2024

U.S. warns ICC action on Israel would hurt cease-fire chances

The U.S. and its allies are concerned that the International Criminal Court may issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials just as the country is getting closer to a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, potentially jeopardizing a deal, people familiar with the matter said.
A man rides a scooter past apartment high rises under construction in Zhengzhou, China, in January 2019.
BUSINESS
Apr 30, 2024

Strained Chinese cities struggle to pay homebuying subsidies

Some local governments are unable to raise funds to pay promised subsidies, frustrating buyers and casting doubts over future support measures.
A busy street in Kigali, Rwanda. Under the voluntary program, the U.K. will pay asylum seekers to move to Rwanda to help clear the backlog of refugees who have arrived in the country in recent years.
WORLD / Politics
May 1, 2024

Britain sends first voluntary asylum seeker to Rwanda, report says

The voluntary program is separate to a forced deportation program that Britain is about to embark on in the next few months.
Four girls congregate at an empty swimming pool at their high school and discuss their lives in “Swimming in a Sand Pool.”
CULTURE / Film
May 2, 2024

‘Swimming in a Sand Pool’ takes rare dive into gender issues

Nobuhiro Yamashita draws appealingly natural performances from his cast of newcomers in the film adaptation of an award-winning play.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks to reporters at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on Wednesday before embarking on a trip to France and South American countries.
JAPAN / Politics
May 2, 2024

Kishida and Attal vow to expand Japan-France ties

Attal also expressed his condolences over the recent death of renowned Japanese manga artist Akira Toriyama.
Pianist Fuzjko Hemming shot to fame after a documentary program about her life was aired on NHK in 1999. Her debut album released the same year, "La Campanella," sold over 2 million copies.
CULTURE / Music
May 2, 2024

Renowned pianist Fuzjko Hemming dies at 92

Born in Berlin to a Swedish architect father and a Japanese pianist mother, Hemming began learning the piano from her mother at the age of 5.
Apple CEO Tim Cook attends the Wonderlust event at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California, on Sept. 12, 2023.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 3, 2024

Apple unveils record $110 billion buyback as results beat low expectations

Apple's quarterly revenue fell, but less than analysts had expected, and CEO Tim Cook said revenue growth would return in the current quarter.
Members of the Polish military train with the Patriot air defense system at an airport in Warsaw in February 2023.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
May 4, 2024

Missile defense successes fuel global urgency to acquire systems

Experts say the practical and political incentives of investing in the systems will be too hard to ignore — and intensify arms races.
People are rescued after flooding in Canoas, at the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul on Sunday.
WORLD / Society
May 6, 2024

Death toll from southern Brazil rainfall rises to 78, with many still missing

Floods from several days of storms have affected more than two-thirds of some 500 cities in Rio Grande do Sul, leaving more than 115,000 people displaced.
Over the past two years, 2.4 million people arrived in Canada, more than the population of the U.S. state of New Mexico. Yet Canada barely added enough housing that would cater to just the residents of the New Mexico capital of Albuquerque.
BUSINESS / Economy
May 6, 2024

Global housing shortages are crushing immigration-fueled growth

In developed economies such as Canada, Australia and the U.K., life is getting tougher for both locals and immigrants alike.
Morgue staff work with members of On The Shield, an organization tasked with collecting bodies of killed soldiers, at a morgue in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, on March 29. Ukraine struggles to name its dead; families of some soldiers say they have spent months trying to get official confirmation of their loved one’s death, adding to their anguish.
WORLD
May 6, 2024

DNA tests and stranded bodies: Ukraine’s struggle to name its dead

Families of some soldiers say they have spent months trying to get official confirmation of their loved ones’ deaths, adding to their anguish.
A screencap of a performance of Hiroto Nagai's “String Quartet No. 1 ‘Polar Energy Budget’” by the PRT Quartet
CULTURE / Music / OUR PLANET
May 7, 2024

How a Japanese scientist is turning the climate crisis into music

Hiroto Nagai has sonified polar climate data, resulting in a string quartet piece that he thinks can get people to care more about what the data expresses.
A vehicle carrying Seiha Sekine, the 32-year-old common-law husband of the deceased Tokyo couple's first daughter, leaves a police station in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward on Tuesday.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
May 7, 2024

Two more arrested over brutal murder of couple in Tochigi

Police suspect the Tokyo couple's murder was orchestrated by their daughter's common-law husband, who managed some of the restaurants they operated.

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat